


Indestructible

by sunflowerbright



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Priorities people!! i have them!!, and instead of writing my exam, instead of working on my original novel, oh look i'm writing fanfic again, s4 spoilers, set after That Thing that Didn't Happen, this drabble is now canon instead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 11:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8799337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: He dies, or he thinks he does, and then he wakes back up again. Just like that.





	1. Indestructible

**Author's Note:**

> No proof-reading done bc I am a lazy bastard.
> 
> I may continue this? This is mostly just me keysmashing to get words out, but I have a few ideas for other stories about these two. Because clearly writing Black Sails fanfiction is more important than my exam writing about - wait for it - Treasure Island! Procastination is a gift to us all.

His throat, his mouth, is on fire and he cannot speak. But he needs to speak. Why can't he speak?

"Don't try to speak," a voice warns him. He wants to curse and spit; who the hell are you? Who the hell do you think you are, don't you know who _I_ am? But the words won't come, his throat is on fire. His mouth is on fire.

"It'll be alright. I've got you."

_Who the fuck are you?_

There's a warm, broad hand smoothing over his forehead, over his hair, and its relaxing,  it's familiar in a way that a hug always is, even though he's never given many hugs in his life, never been the type to receive them _(fucking jack rackham and edward too; who else? who else would hold him? not eleanor)._ The hand comes again, and he forgets how to be tense, even though he's been tense his entire fucking life. Gradually, he becomes aware of a broad thigh underneath his head, a warm pillow. He should be dead. His throat is on fucking fire. 

"You need to rest and..." There's a murmur, he can't hear. Has his ears stopped working now too? He's too tired for this. "We have to be quiet. I don't even know if you can hear me, but be quiet, Vane, alright?"

He can't. He makes a sound at the back of his throat, a little desperate. He should be dead. Is he dead? Why does he have to be fucking quiet if he's fucking dead? He tries to open his eyes, but that's the hardest thing he's ever done, harder than swallowing his pride, harder than stopping Blackbeard from killing Flint, harder than having to watch her go. He doesn't know what's wrong with him, because it can't be that hard to open his goddamn eyes. His head is swimming with opiates, for the pain, but they haven't given him enough, it's never enough.

"No, shit... Vane, be quiet, alright? No, no, I know." The last is said to someone else, and he doesn't like it, can't have that there's someone else here to see him like this, when he can't even open his fucking eyes. "Just go, I've got him." Footsteps, disappearing. "Vane... _Charles._ We're hiding to try and save your skin, so I need you to be quiet - for me, yeah?"

He's quiet. He isn't quite aware of why he stops, but he stops, and he's rewarded when the hand comes back, smoothing down his hair, trailing over his skin. It feels good, it feels nice. Anne hugged him once, when she'd gotten accidentally drunk, and she'd drooled on his shoulder and if someone had seen them he would have pushed her away, yelled at her, what the fuck kind of thing was that to do, slobber over your captain? But it had just been Jack there, drunk off his ass too, and Anne who was angrier than even him, all the time, she'd hugged him. It hadn't been so bad.

He isn't sure how long they lie there for, or how long he lies and the other sits, but he falls asleep and still burns in his dreams, watching Eleanor watching him as he's about to hang from the noose. Scared - he hadn't been scared, not once. Teach would've been proud. Albinus, too. And Anne, Anne would have liked his choice of last words, and Jack would have been able to appreciate them, even if he'd been angry with him, Charles knows he would have been angry. He must be angry now, now that he's dead.

"I need to move you," the voice says, and he recognizes it in a flash, and then he's able to open his eyes.

Billy stares down at him, stubbled, eyes red and tired. He lifts Charles like he weighs nothing, and carries him like a fucking bride, and he'd have words about that if he wasn't so tired, he's definitely going to have words later, when he isn't about to fall down dead.

"You're not dead," Billy tells him, and Charles' voice is creaky like a rusty hinge when he says: "Dammit."

 

 

 

The first time he'd seen him had been at the warehouse. Already tall, far too tall, muscle defined, skin tanned golden; there'd been a clench in his gut when he'd first seen Billy, seen him lean down so he could be more at level with near everyone around him, seen the sunlight fall at an angle down his face. It wasn't often that Charles wondered what it'd be like to get pushed and pull, to be pinned to a bed by someone who really was as strong, was stronger, than him, but just that once. He'd thought about it.

"You really have a thing for blondes," Jack'd muttered, and Charles had glared until his Quartermaster hid behind his coloured glasses, and they'd said no more about it. Not until Anne came reporting back, they call him Billy, Bones, think his real name is Mason or Manderly. New on Flint's ship.

Because of fucking course he was.

The second time he'd seen him had been at the tents, leaning over and talking with another of Flint's men, bushy-haired, elderly. Charles had laid on the sand, propped up against a case of tobacco, not yet delivered to the warehouse, he couldn't recall why, not now, years later. His legs had been crossed at the ankles, the sand had been soft and Billy had hunched, with his back to him, his shirt folding away from and against his back. Against broad, broad shoulders.

He'd still had Eleanor back then, had gloried in her, worshipped her, as she deserved. That didn't mean he couldn't look; he knew she looked, at a new recruit, at some of the whores. She was too professional to do anything about it, and Charles was too in love. He'd woken up once, when they'd had to go ashore, and there wasn't enough tents, and he'd told Anne and Jack not to fucking fuck right next to him, but they'd gone and done it anyway, and he'd woken in the middle of the night to soft moans and skin sliding against skin. He'd turned and for a moment, just a moment, Jack's hand had come up near his, and he could've reached for it, and most likely Anne wouldn't have tried to gut him and maybe he could have...

Instead he'd rolled around, his back to them and done his best to fall back asleep, pretending he hadn't seen, heard, anything. He'd yearned for Eleanor then, mind going over any possible solution to get her aboard the ship, but no, fuck no, that'd never work; she might be as fierce and untamable as the sea, but she wouldn't get by on a ship. She wouldn't have the power she needed.

It didn't mean that he couldn't look. He was still looking when Eleanor threw him aside like a piece of trash, when Billy was made boatswain, when the gossip trickled in; he's competent, he's fierce, brave, loyal, he's got the men in hand, he knows what he's doing, he's, he's, he's...

Everyone loved Billy Bones, from Flint's Quartermaster to the salt of the fucking sea.

When Charles saw him next, he'd grown even taller.

 

 

 

He wakes because Billy is snoring, and he reaches out, a little unthinkingly, touches his back. Billy startles, turns around, blinks at him with large eyes.

"What the fuck am I doing here?" he asks, voice rasping - his voice always rasps, but now its like listening to scouring, to a keelhauling, to a fucking siren with a bad cough. He almost winces at the sound of it, but Billy doesn't, Billy just seems tired.

"We saved you," he says. "You're our secret weapon."

"What the fuck?"

"Imagine," Billy says, and the first thing Charles thinks of is the many times he's imagined being between those thighs, imagines how hard Billy would pull at his hair, imagines raking his nails down that golden back. "Imagine the resistance comes to a head, and the ghost of Charles Vane, the very man who started it, appears."

"Fuck that, you've already got a ghost."

"No one's holding you to it. You can go to some farm and raise goats instead."

"Fuck that."

"You decide. In the meantime..."

"Is that what you thought that nod meant? This is what Nassau needs, this is what I'd give up for her..."

"You're not dead, just be happy about it. And go to sleep."

"Fuck that!"

"You sound like a parrot."

"Oh. Fuck you."

Then Billy reaches out, places his fingers on his arm, his bare arm, and there are shivers down Charles' back. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow we'll talk."

"We'll fucking talk?"

"Go to sleep."

He does.


	2. wretched sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is a follow-up to the other chapter, which isn't quite a follow-up? I got inspired at a party last night, and this is written on two hours of sleep. Have fun with it.

He's in love with Eleanor, and that's been true, that's been a fact of his life for damn well over a decade, for years and years and years and...

Looking at Billy now, sitting slouched in the seat across from him, broad shoulders slumped but a grin on his face, then Charles has to wonder; he wonders if perhaps he's still in love with Eleanor because he has gotten so used to being in love with her, at this point. He can't remember not being in love with her, can't recall what it's like to live without that gnawing in his chest. He remembers of course, that there was a time Before Eleanor. There was a time Before Blackbeard as well, and even a time Before Albinus, but that's... It was so long ago.

He's become used to so much.

"You're staring," Billy tells him, with a grin, and Charles leans forward, his hand snaking around, cupping around Billy's shoulder - his skin is hot, warm like sunlight - and then he's kissing him, slanting their mouths and licking at his lips. Billy tastes like rum, it turns out. And salt.

When he pulls away, Billy's looking at him a little dazed, very confused. "What was... what did you do that for?"

Charles archs an eyebrow and pretends his heart isn't pounding like a smith at his anvil, like a whore about to get paid, like a.... Billy licks his lips, and he gets distracted for a moment, staring at that tongue, at those lips, and fuck, he's taking too long to answer.

"Why'd you think?" he asks, just when Billy's about to open his mouth, and ask again.

"I don't know," Billy says, eyes wide, his lips parted; he always looks confused, like a lost puppy among all these wolves. But he's not, not a puppy, is he, he wasn't even a puppy when Charles first saw him, when he first came into this life. He's never been a puppy, he's a wolf, too. "I'm... Vane, just answer the question."

Fuck that. He isn't about to sit here and talk. "I'm not about to sit here and talk," he says, because he can weave words like the best of them, but it pays to be blunt more often than not. At least that's what he tells himself.

It pays this time too, because when he leans in, slower this time, so Billy has ample opportunity to pull away, well, Billy doesn't, he leans in instead, and Charles' lips are curved in a smile when they press against Billy's once more.

His hand reaches out, gropes down his front, under his shirt, down his chest. And Billy - Billy lets him. It's Charles who pulls away again, hand still on Billy's chest, his cock, his back, his thighs all aching. "How come they call you 'Bones'?" he asks, because he thinks he's heard why but suddenly he can't remember, and Billy bursts out laughing. Before Charles can get offended, pull away, Billy is pulling him in, large arms wrapping around his shoulders, until Charles has been pulled into Billy's lap, his hand trapped between their bodies, their bodies flush against each other.

"I'm not about to sit here and talk, when there's better things to do," Billy tells him, and Charles... Charles shuts up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might do more for this series; some continuations of the chapters before, others just random oneshots, maybe even AUs. If people have any prompts or wishes, throw them at me, and I'll see what I can do.


End file.
